Columns

From the category archives: Columns

LASHA MORNINGSTAR

The station manager at the television station where I was working many years ago came over with a watchful look on his face. He handed me a sheet. It was the RCMP's anniversary. The number of years I have forgotten. What the manager was offering was some freelance apart from my regular work. The job? Write two-minute scripts about the Mounties for radio. Fresh out of SAIT and strapped for money, I said a quick "Sure."

Lydia Cristini

First Sunday of Lent
February 22, 2015

I think it was Father David Bittner who explained "covenant" in a way I found easy to understand: an agreement or a contract, which makes the parties into family members. He used the example of the covenant of marriage, which makes formerly unrelated people into a family of two. The Hebrew people entered a covenant with God almost 4,000 years ago and almost 2,000 of those years are mapped out in the Old Testament. God promises he will be their God, he frees them from slavery and he continually blesses them. The Hebrews? They promise they will be his people, and they continually complain and are frequently unfaithful to him.

Out of Boston comes the news that potential jurors in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged with murder in the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, are being asked whether they are Catholic and if they agree with Church teaching on the death penalty. If the answer to both questions is "yes," they are excluded from serving on the jury, one requirement for such service being that a juror must be willing to impose the death penalty or a life sentence with no possibility of release. Catholic reaction to this news, according to an article in USA Today, has been mixed.

MARK PICKUP

There was a change in how I viewed being chronically ill for more than three decades. I cannot pinpoint when it happened; the change progressed gradually over time. No longer did I see my incurable sickness and handicap as a curse but as a blessing disguised as misfortune. What began with the question "why?" became anger that no answer seemed forthcoming. Eventually the anger simmered and cooled into acceptance and finally acceptance was followed by peace and anticipation. There are questions for which there are no answers, only understanding. They are questions that focus on the deepest meaning of life or eternity.

DR. GERRY TURCOTTE

As a child I was always thrown when the priest announced that we were in Ordinary Time. Sometimes it seemed self-evident; but often it was anything but ordinary. My uncle bagged a moose; someone won the lottery; another had triplets. And in the papers . . . goodness me, nothing seemed ordinary. So why was the priest proclaiming that we were in the fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time? What, I always wondered, was extraordinary time? Maybe I should come back later when the cool things were happening.

JOE GUNN

The priest from Newfoundland was the most honest. Our agency had provided worship guides and hymns on creation themes for use in services last September on the same weekend when more than 300,000 people marched in New York City, calling for action on climate change. But the Newfoundland pastor reported, "I'll use the Prayers of the Faithful you sent, but I don't feel comfortable preaching about climate change. You know, we just never talked about that in seminary." True. And this is something Pope Francis wants to change.

The terrorist attacks that killed 12 people at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7 have rightly been described as acts of "indescribable barbarity." They were a direct assault on the sanctity of human life and the peaceful order of democratic society. However, before we make the French cartoonists into innocent martyrs to the cause of free speech, we ought to reflect on the nature of satire. The terrorist attack has created a rush of people who defend the right of cartoonists to lampoon people's most basic beliefs and to treat nothing, absolutely nothing, as sacred.

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

It's common for us to see God's grace and blessing in what unites us. We naturally sense the presence of grace when, at our core, we feel a strong moral bond with certain other persons, churches and faiths. That, biblically, is what defines family. But what if what separates us, what if what makes other persons, churches and faiths seem foreign and strange is also a grace, a difference intended by God? Can we think of our differences, as we think of our unity, as a gift from God? Most religions, including Christianity, would answer affirmatively.

BRETT FAWCETT

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 1, 2015

Every morning, the first words on the lips of countless priests, religious and laity are the opening lines of today's psalm: "Come, let us sing to the Lord, and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us." This "invitatory" psalm, so called because it invites us to prayer, then encourages us to "listen to his voice." It is wise to begin every day with this reminder. We often forget to stop what we are doing and allow ourselves any silence – or, if we do, it is often only so that we can refresh and strengthen ourselves (many modern techniques marketed as "meditation" focus on this), rather than opening ourselves up to listen to God's voice speaking to us from the depths of our sanctified soul.